Kite Tale Connections bringing people together for afternoon of fun
The community is invited to connect with the Saskpower Windscape Kite Festival during a relaxing afternoon of fun.
Kite Tale Connections is an event for family, friends and anyone who want to learn more about the Windscape Kite Festival and who want to connect with kite enthusiasts and other community members.
The next Kite Tale Connections will take place from 2-4 p.m. at the Frosty Bean Coffee House & Ice Cream Parlour in downtown Swift Current, April 21.
Christine Ciona is a member of the Windscape Kite Festival volunteer committee that organizes Kite Tale Connections.
“Our role with the volunteer committee is to really build great relationships with members in the community, to nurture our volunteers and to bring people together,” she said. “The Kite Festival is amazing. This is our 18th year that we’ve been doing this as a community and it’s the whole community that puts on festivals.”
She emphasized that the work of the volunteer committee goes beyond just recruiting volunteers for Windscape.
“We do not just recruit people,” she said. “We want to meet people. We want to make people feel like they’re welcomed, received, and part of a beautiful relationship with the Windscape Kite Festival and that these connections are meaningful and long lasting. It’s not just clicking a button and filling some hours.”
The hosting of Kite Tale Connections as a monthly event in the run-up to the Windscape Kite Festival is therefore a way to achieve this goal of creating a relationship with the community.
“Anyone who’s curious about Windscape Kite Festival can come,” she said. “It’s a fun gathering. There’s a theme every time, and every month we pop up in a different location. Last month we were generously received by the Swift Current Mall and this month, in April, we’re going to be at the Frosty Bean.”
The event is for all ages and the location is always family-friendly. There will be a kite trivia game, fun activities and surprises for all ages.
“You can come if you’re kite curious, you can come if you’re new to the community and you want to meet some
people or you might really be an eager volunteer or know nothing about it and just want to learn more,” she said. “It’s not an intentional recruitment campaign at all. It’s really a connection building, relationship building, learning experience with fun on the side. So we’ve got games and fun little mixer activities.”
According to Ciona the inaugural Kite Tale Connections held in the Swift Current Mall in March was a lot of fun.
“There were even a couple shoppers who were going with their shopping carts to their cars and they stuck around,” she said.
She noted that the continuation of the Windscape Kite Festival is a tribute to the strength of the community to keep it going. It takes a lot of helping hands to make the event a reality.
It takes over 200 volunteers in a variety of roles to host the Windscape Kite Festival on June 22-23 and the associated Long Day’s Night Music Festival, which happens from June 20-22.
“We have everything from activities with children under the tent and we have children’s activities outside, like the spray paint mural or the bols racing,” she said. “If you love welcoming people from all over the prairies and other parts of the world to the festival, you can be one of our amazing greeters and our welcoming crew. You can help the kite flyers. You can help behind the scenes, if people are interested in setting up and taking down and want to move some muscle and help build the tent and put things up.”
She added that youth are also welcome to volunteer for different roles at Windscape and they had a great crew
of youth volunteers in the past.
“It looks great on a resume and you get to build amazing connections,” she said. “We actually had some summer students who first started volunteering as a teenager, then they became a summer student. And now they’re doing other things in the arts world across the province. So you never know the impact of volunteering for something like this can have.”
For details about the Saskpower Windscape Kite Festive and to sign up as a volunteer, go to the event website at www.windscapekitefestival.ca or otherwise contact Ciona by calling 306774-6478 or send an e-mail to volunteer@windscapekitefestival.ca